WWALS Watershed Coalition advocates for conservation and stewardship of the Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, Little, and Suwannee River watersheds in south Georgia and north Florida through education, awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen activities.

Best to
test for arsenic, and maybe lead, radon, and uranium, in your well and hot water heater water.
In March 2013,
South Health District and the Georgia Department of Health
recommended testing for arsenic.
That was three years after Janet McMahan discovered the arsenic problem
after her family members and pets got cancer.
As we wrote a few months before the Health Departments finally made
their recommendation,
after Janet got Erin Brockovitch involved,
you may also find lead and uranium.
The problem has not gone away.
Also, you may find radon.

Janet wrote Monday:

This Water is from Well on private property 3 miles from
Willacoochee. Sample taken from Water Heater. Lady says she uses all
of the hot water when taking a shower each morning. Looking for her
Radon Level now.

Janet added:

Radon sample collected at Same Well.

Where is all this contamination coming from?
Arsenic (fortunately not found in this specific sample) could come from a variety of sources, including old fence posts and old cattle dips.

In short, coal ash toxics have the potential to injure all of the
major organ systems, damage physical health and development, and
even contribute to mortality.

There are no coal-burning power plants near Willacoochee, Georgia.
However, mercury from Plant Scherer, north of Macon, the country’s dirtiest
coal plant, still
gets into our Alapaha River through the air, according to the EPA.

For our Withlacoochee River (and New River and Little River),
the EPA in 2002 established a
mercury Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) from its headwaters on down.
The EPA was less specific about the source of the mercury in the Withlacoochee River, naming multiple National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System
(NPDES) permit holders.
But that EPA Withlacoochee TMDL does say:

Based on a review of the Mercury Study Report to Congress,
significant potential point sources of airborne mercury include
coal-fired power plants, waste incinerators, cement and limekilns,
smelters, pulp and paper mills, and chlor-alkali factories (USEPA,
1997).

Atmospheric deposition is a major source of mercury in many
parts of the country. In a study of trace metal contamination in
reservoirs in New Mexico, it was found that 80 percent of mercury
found in surface waters was coming from atmospheric deposition (Popp
et al., 1996). In other remote areas (Wisconsin, Sweden, and Canada)
atmospheric deposition has 10 Total Maximum Daily Load for Total
Mercury in the Withlacoochee Watershed, GA February 28, 2002 been
identified as the primary (or possibly only) contributor of mercury
to the waterbodies (Watras et al., 1994; Burke et al., 1995; Keeler
et al., 1994).

Virtually 100 percent of the radon gas present in feed coal is
transferred to the gas phase and is lost in stack emissions.

That USGS report does not say whether the airborne radon can be redeposited in rivers or ground water,
although it stands to reason it won’t stay in the air forever.

But can something as heavy as uranium travel through the air?
Apparently not, according to the same USGS report:

In contrast, less volatile elements such as thorium, uranium, and
the majority of their decay products are almost entirely retained in
the solid combustion wastes. Modern power plants can recover greater
than 99.5 percent of the solid combustion wastes. The average ash
yield of coal burned in the United States is approximately 10 weight
percent. Therefore, the concentration of most radioactive elements
in solid combustion wastes will be approximately 10 times the
concentration in the original coal.

The USGS report reminds us that uranium does occur naturally:

Figure 2 illustrates that the uranium concentration of most fly ash
(10 to 30 ppm) is still in the range found in some granitic rocks,
phosphate rocks, and shales. For example, the Chattanooga Shale that
occurs in a large portion of the Southeastern United States contains
between 10 and 85 ppm U.

The Chattanooga Shale in the Appalachians is nowhere near Willacoochee, Georgia,
but the point still remains that it is possible to get uranium contamination
out of the local ground.
However, we don’t find uranium in most wells around here, so
there is still a strong possibility that it is coming from somewhere else.

We know there is coal ash in the active landfill
in Lowndes County, Georgia, so some of it might have gone to landfills
closer to Willacoochee in Atkinson County, Georgia.

[Aaron] Mitchell[, general manager of environmental affairs for Georgia Power,] said coal ash by-products could potentially go to an ash
marketer or be stored in a landfill. The ash is used as an
ingredient in concrete, drywall and fertilizer, but no ash has been
marketed at Plant Yates since Units 6 and 7 were converted to gas
and units 1 through 5 were retired.

Maybe not at Plant Yates, but how about at other Georgia Power coal plants,
or at coal plants elsewhere, with the fertilizer being shipped to Georgia?

The Ninth Street Dump Site is located on a parcel of property
that is approximately five (5) acres of vacant land located between
U.S. Highway 82, Tift Highway, and East 9th Street in Tifton, Tift
County, Georgia, in an industrial and commercial area. A drainage
ditch near the Site flows southwest from Highway 82 to the
intersection of Tift Avenue and East 9th Street.

Rather than recycling all the EC Dust sent to the SoGreen
facility, Herman Parramore, SoGreen’s owner, disposed of large
quantities of EC Dust in various locations throughout Tift County
as_fill material. EC Dust from the SoGreen facility was disposed of
at the Ninth Street Dump.

The Respondents conducted a preliminary assessment of the Site
in June of 1993. Soil samples taken at the Site on behalf of the
Respondents revealed the presence of lead in concentrations up to
39,000 ppm, chromium concentrations up to 1600 ppm, and cadmium
levels up to 1100 ppm.

The EPA ordered a cleanup of this “EC Dust”.
But how could anyone retrieve it all?
How do we know it was only disposed of in Tift County, and not
in nearby counties?
Even if just in Tift County, the Alapaha River is that county’s northeast border,
upstream from Willacoochee.

And what about So Green’s
“commercial waste-derived fertilizer”?
How much of that,
some of which, according to the 1997 story also was derived from coal ash,
was spread as fertilizer on fields?

Any of these materials could have leached into the ground water and
gotten into that well in Willacoochee.
Regardless of the source, some testing seems prudent.

Meanwhile, that EPA order mentioned that about the Ninth Street Dump Site,

A drainage
ditch near the Site flows southwest from Highway 82 to the
intersection of Tift Avenue and East 9th Street.

That ditch then drains into creeks that run into the Little River,
upstream of Reed Bingham State Park and the Little Confluence with
the Withlacoochee River at Troupville, just west of Valdosta.

I wonder if that Ninth Street Dump Site has anything to do with lead in the Little and Withlacoochee Rivers?